Anahita Without a Face

By Shireen Madon

After a relief in Kermanshah, Iran, of the Goddess Anahita, King Khosrow I, and Ahura Mazda (God)

You stood beside our god, you anointed a human king, and yet you are forever

rendered the shortest of the bunch. You wore a nice hat, a robe of uncertain color,

you brought with you a perennial fog as the weather couldn’t decide what to be for you.

In the temple were tuberoses smoking on coals, a gold light battened to the floors,

bowls overflowing with limes. Prayers were prayed in hope of rainfall, 
surviving

battle, and infinite plastic baggies-worth of breastmilk. Anahita Without a Face,

you left great fires behind when you departed, you left the sunrise and all the hours

after. You left like you were deported. You left us as heretics, you left fatwas, you left

an anesthetized people, you left your fan club clamoring, as great in bigness as all these waters

which  flow upon the earth. We hope retirement has been kind to you. We will tend our own

waters now, our droughts and floods, our seas of plastic.

 

Source: Poetry (October 2025)